Business and tourism boost Florida economy

Florida has created 325,000 new private-sector jobs in the past two years, boosted in large part by record tourism numbers that have continued into 2013.

In all, more than 26 million visitors came to Florida from January to March, a 4.7 percent increase that represented the largest number of tourists in a three-month period in history, according to Visit Florida, the state's tourism marketing agency.

Those figures, released Wednesday, come as Florida is also making strides in attracting new business to the state. Last week, rental car company Hertz Global Corp. unveiled plans to move its headquarters and 700 jobs to Lee County.

Combined, the tourism surge and other economic gains have pushed statewide unemployment to a four-year low, Florida Commerce Secretary Gray Swoope said Wednesday during a visit to Sarasota.

There were a record 1,087,700 Floridians employed in the tourism industry during the first quarter, up 36,000 from the final three months of last year, said Glenn Hastings, Visit Florida's chairman and executive director of the St. Johns County Tourist Development Council.

Tourism and recreation taxable sales in Florida increased 5.1 percent in January and February compared with the same months in 2012. Average daily room rates rose nearly 7 percent to $136.45 even as average occupancies jumped 2.3 percent to 74.1 percent in the first quarter.

“Coming off of a record year that has proven to be even stronger than we initially estimated only adds to the momentum Visit Florida has been building on to make Florida the No. 1 travel destination in the world,” said Will Seccombe, the agency's chief executive.

Swoope said that because of that high impact from tourism, the state is investing to boost the visitor industry, already Florida's largest economic driver and a magnet for a record 91.4 million visitors last year.

Visit Florida's budget swelled from $22 million to $65 million in the latest legislative session.

The state also recognizes the importance of sports tourism, said Swoope during an appearance at an Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County luncheon attended by 115.

In the legislative session ended this month, $5 million in new money were earmarked for rowing facilities at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota County, though the money has yet to receive approval from the governor.

A need to diversify But Swoope also said more work needs to be done to diversify the Sunshine State's economy, historically heavily reliant on both tourism and the real estate industry.

To that end, Florida is also expanding spending on its 15 ports, by $560 million, to aid the 58,000 state businesses that export, Swoope said.

Most recently regionally, California-based stand-up paddleboard company Hovie SUP opened a 20,000-square-foot manufacturing operation at Port Manatee that is slated to employ two dozen.

Florida also needs to expand its manufacturing employment, Swoope said, which currently accounts for 4.3 percent of state jobs, the lowest percentage in the Southeast.

Gov. Rick Scott also wants to eliminate the sales tax that manufacturers pay when purchasing equipment in Florida, one of just four states with that levy.

“We would have a lot more jobs if we could remove some of those barriers,” said Swoope, who also heads the public-private Enterprise Florida Inc. economic development group.

But perhaps more importantly, Swoope said, Florida needs to avoid the complacency that seemed to set in prior to the Great Recession.

“For many years we had such natural growth in the state that we didn't think strategically about what we needed to do for economic development,” he said. “In 2008, the pipeline all of the sudden shut off, and people started looking around and saying we need to start diversifying our economy.”

Swoope worked previously as executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority and helped attract Toyota and GE Aviation to that state before being named Florida's Secretary of Commerce in 2011.

“We really didn't see Florida on the map in competitive projects,” he told his Sarasota audience.